We hold this truth to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.
Ah, like Democratic Underground.
At least their name sounds a little creepy, the Underground.
Free Republic sounds so honorable, it’s sad they would choose such a name to spread crap.
That’s the Declaration of Indepenence, not the Constitution, and is thus irrelevant. (And it’s “these truths,” not “this truth”).
RD: Grass roots efforts will never serve anybody’s interests except the gaggle of mindless idiots who never want anything but to raid the gov’t coffers to line their own pockets…in other words, the “common man”. […] The wealthy make this country what it is […]
And you imagine that wealthy people never want to “raid the gov’t coffers to line their own pockets”? Ever heard of corporate welfare, bribery, corruption, pork-barrel spending, etc.?
I’m certainly not anti-rich, and I certainly appreciate the valuable contributions that so many honest, hard-working, aware and intelligent wealthy people make to our society. However, that doesn’t stop me from appreciating the valuable contributions that so many honest, hard-working, aware and intelligent non-wealthy people make too. (Silly me, I thought that most wealthy people shared my appreciation. Or are you saying that when the boss sends round a memo thanking employees for their hard work and dedication and resourcefulness that broke all previous productivity and profitability records and so forth, what he really means is that they’re a “gaggle of mindless idiots” who are just looking for a handout?)
This has got to be the most blatant expression of elitist contempt for the non-wealthy that I’ve ever seen on these boards. (Heck, it’s more elitist than anything I’ve heard here in India, which is still hampered with a lot of the anti-egalitarian prejudices of the caste system.) And to think that some conservatives call liberals elitist!
I would imagine (I would certainly hope) that most conservatives would indeed be embarrassed by this kind of aristocratic disdain for the vast majority of the population. If they’re not embarrassed, they should at least be scared, because a political group that openly regards the v. m. of the p. as “a gaggle of mindless idiots” is likely to lose a lot of popular support.
I certainly do, and I have a great deal of scorn for that too. I think that most businessmen just want to do business, but gov’t meddling and special favors corrupt them, and some regulations (licensing comes to mind) tend to force businessmen to play the game of political pull to succeed rather than just putting out a good product.
Quite possibly the same would be true of the lower economic classes if we’d never gotten into the wealth redistribution game in the first place. But once we dangled “free” money in front of their noses, they’ve done nothing but continue to cry for more as if it’s their “right”, never taking notice that what they feel entitled to has to be provided to them by someone who’s actually creating wealth.
Without the capitalist, all the working class can do is move a rock from here to there. It took inventors and industrialists to create the tools and processes by which the laborer could radically increase his production. If all he could do is split a boulder with hammer and chisel, his productivity would be relatively low. Industrialization, brought about by capitalist innovators, greatly increased his productivity and thereby his wage and standard of living. Without the capitalist, the laborer is still grubbing through the dirt with his hands planting seeds by hand on some feudal lord’s lot.
The capitalists are the producers. They’re the ones who design the methods by which simple labor can produce in value tenfold what it otherwise might. The bagboy at the grocery store can’t run a factory, the dock laborer can’t design and implement a method for extracting oil from the ground, and certainly neither could provide the necessary capital to get the enterprise going. Labor is necessary to be sure, but without the tools and processes provided to them by their employers their output would be diddly-squat compared to what we have now.
Most conservatives would not express this, to be sure. Although consider that most conservatives are religious, and religion by and large tends to treat humanity even worse. I say the common man has been turned into a leech by government dangling illusory treasures in front of his nose, the religious conservative thinks all men are twisted by sin, or some such nonsense.
What I want is for the common man to stop acting like a spoiled little brat who thinks he’s entitled to something just because he thinks he “needs” it, and expects somebody else to happily provide it to him. There’s no way the common man contributes as much to this nation, as an individual, as the wealthy man does, why does he expect an equal voice?
I don’t feel shackled to democracy anyways. I’m a constitutional monarchist. To equate democracy with liberty is folly, democracy is just tyranny of the majority. What the government is allowed to do, and who makes the decisions it’s allowed to make, those are two wholly different things.
Suffrage is the ability to cast a ballot. I haven’t said anything about restricting that yet. However, the Constitution doesn’t support the idea that every ballot cast should have equal weight. If it did, Gore presumably be President. In fact the very idea that we have a Senate flies in the face of that idea, even without the 17th amendment.
Wow. American Royalists. Knock me over with a 1500s-style death arrow. I thought we tarred and feathered all of you and drove you over the Canadian border about 230 years ago…
Duh. I was addressing the point at hand with as little distraction for our interlocutor as possible.
Duh yourself.
I see the Constitution and Declaration mixed up all the goddamned time on these boards. I try to point out the error whenever I see it. You know, fighting ignorance and all that.
Your post was free of any references to prior posts, there were several intervening posts between yours and the ones I assume you were replying to, and the OP deals with an issue of constitutionality. The view that you were confusing the two documents was thus a perfectly reasonable reading of your post. If you don’t want people to assume you’re making a stupid but sadly commonplace error, provide some damned context to your words.
We did. They sent them back.
I did not issue a return authorization number for that shipment, dammit…
Dewey, ol’ chum, didn’t you notice that the point our reactionary friend was making was about what should be, not what is? It’s a philosophical issue (being kind), not a matter of existing constitutional law. Much, much more goes into the philosophy of democracy than you’ll find in any particular document, and there are even competing philosophies. People do have disagreements, and even issues that were settled centuries ago can be instructively revisited. So get off it.
We’ve discussed before your strange insistence on narrowly confining all debate to an arena, the one of American law, in which you seem to be comfortable. That’s fine as far as it goes, but con temptously dismissing anyone else’s attempts to consider the broader world outside your own is spreading ignorance, not fighting it. You would do well to consider your posts more carefully before continuing that habit. Word to the wise.
But, if your most basic motivation is to simply find a point to score off me, well, then, you’re welcome to this one. Spirit of the seasons, ya know?
Why are you calling all of these people capitalists? To me, it sounds like you are referring more to scientists and engineers. [Of course, as a scientist, I have my own bias about who is most important. 
]
Seriously though, I agree that with education comes the ability to do more creative and specialized work. And, there is certainly a relation between education and wealth…But, it is not 1-to-1, particularly as you get up high on the wealth scale.
And, at any rate, these people are generally being compensated higher for their work than those who work in jobs requiring less education or specialized skills. I still don’t see why they should also get a larger say in how we choose to govern ourselves.
Assuming that you are not being wholly sarcastic… are we to believe that entrepreneurs, those with the persistence and luck to establish themselves in a successful business, need these special privileges? Are they not already well compensated for their efforts? On top of this they should decide how our nations resources are to be used as well? Not that they would take advantage of the situation, of course.
I’d like to see them run their empires without their employees. A person’s contribution is not negligible because they happen to be more skilled at being a teacher, a scientist, an astronaut, or a construction worker than as a business owner. Without their skills, the entrepreneur is only a fairly ignorant small shop owner in a straw hut working with poor tools. This is why everyone deserves an equal voice.
I think that one-person one vote / one-person one dollar is closer to the spirit of democracy. Issues often get buried in the noise of the $400,000 sound system (although may I recommend 12-inch speakers? They would sound so much better). People need to sort out the issues themselves. As it stands it is easy to limit people with soundbites and a narrow media view rather than forcing them to find some information on their own, leveling the field. A few wealthy can afford to bombard people with simple viewpoints ad nauseum. If one hears something often enough, one starts to believe it. The average group of average income earners have a difficult time counteracting a propaganda blitz.
Without a level playing field, any economy, capitalist or otherwise, having a only few players holding more than 50% of the assets becomes a tyranny. That’s the direction we are heading in. Liberty is attained by having the greatest number of people being able to hold those few with the most power accountable for their actions.
Regarding the issue of incumbents wielding more power as the press is already focused on them, I think that this gets more to the REAL heart of the problem. The system itself needs serious realignment. I do think that the airwaves must be made to take up the responsibility entrusted to them and allow blocks of free time to the major candidates. This includes some time attributed to lesser parties as well, probably based on some range of the percentage of votes received, with a drop off point of a single digit percentage point. The democracy I advocate actually has the tools to better become a reality what with the Internet and all. I also believe, as the Internet will become more accessible over the next few years, there will be less of an excuse for large sums of money to be required in order for a candidate to stand on their bully pulpit.
Moreover, I think that with the Internet we have the tools to reduce the amount of representation that we need in our governments. Nowadays, people can make their voices and demands in real-time. I believe that the individual ought to be made more responsible rather than simply relying on representatives. We should be responsible for understanding one or two issues and instructing our reps on exactly how we want them to vote on these issues and others. We need for our schools to start teaching civics as required courses from grade school throughout high school, making active democracy part of our culture. This could all be possible. Of course, having it all this voted in, making it mandatory, might be a little difficult…:rolleyes:
WTF, how does snag manage to have zero posts as his postcount, and yet right here is a post by him?
…um, this isn’t really a post, it’s your conscience speaking? 
I’m still not 100% sure which “reactionary friend” you were responding to, because again, you did not provide any reference to a prior post and none of the posts immediately preceding yours were sensibly addressed by what you wrote.
Again: if you can’t be bothered to provide any kind of context to your remarks, don’t bitch and moan when errors like this are ascribed to you. **
Bullshit.
The OP and the surrounding discussion deals with the Supreme Court upholding McCain-Feingold. The Supreme Court does not uphold or strike down laws on broad notions of philosophy – they uphold or strike them down on constitutional grounds. Pointing out things like the fact that a particular phrase does not appear in the Constitution is therefore perfectly appropriate.
Of course it is appropriate, Dewey. The question is more about whether or not it is relevent. There are, of course, a number of legal scholars, whom you could name easier than I, who support that premise: that unless the Constitution specificly states some “right”, it simply doesn’t exist.
But the Constitution is, to some degree, an excercise in philosophy, political philosophy, to be precise. Hence, an argument based entirely on text to the exclusion of underlying principles is an attempt to redefine the argument on favorable grounds. And should recieve precisely the attention it deserves.
May we assume then that the ninth amendment somehow got by these “scholars”?
’luc, even the most liberal of constitutional scholars recognizes that he or she has to turn to the text of the document in some fashion, or else what they’re engaged in isn’t constitutional analysis. Hence the near-infinite malleability ascribed to the due process and commerce clauses, to cite two examples.
No school of constitutional thought outright says “the text doesn’t matter at all,” even if that is ultimately the result once you scrub away the bullshit. (Heck, I’d be pleased to hear a living constitutionalist admit the text doesn’t matter – it’d be more intellectually honest than activities in which they ordinarily engage).